Currently Listening #2
Canadian Storytelling
G’morning, friends,
Despite having TWO snow days last week, it feels like spring is coming. I’ve been out for a walk every day before work, and it’s cold, but in that Cheerfully Invigorating way. (I do realize that your mileage may vary, hahaha.)
That said, I will admit that I’m slightly questioning my recent Life Choice to hang up my winter coat for the season, but I absolutely refuse to put it back on again. I will stick to layers, NO MATTER HOW MANY I HAVE TO WEAR.
Oh, wow.
Very briefly: If you don’t know The Vinyl Cafe and you love warm, smart, thoughtful, empathetic, HILARIOUS storytelling, you’ve got years and years of Stuart McLean material ahead of you.
More often than not, I’ve heard folks compare his show to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and while I understand the comparison—both tell contemporary slice-of-life stories starring quirky characters—I do think that at their core, they’re quite different.
A Prairie Home Companion, to me, was kind of The Garrison Keillor Show—he starred in all of the skits, often joined the musical acts, and rarely stepped out of the spotlight. Which was fine! Later developments about his handsiness aside, I grew up listening to that show and looked forward to it every week. (Yet another example of my lifelong old-lady-dom?)
The Vinyl Cafe, though. When we discovered it—we were driving and it came on the radio and we just happened across it—we were both so captivated that we literally drove thirty miles out of our way to finish listening to the show. LITERALLY. And the core difference between the two shows—in my opinion!—is that while Stuart McLean was in the spotlight for the majority of the show, he used that space to tell stories for and about other people.
In addition to the Dave and Morley stories—those are the ones that get compared to the Wobegone stories—he also did a segment called the Story Exchange, where people around Canada would send him stories (they had to be short, and they had to be true) and he would read them on air with his inimitable warmth. At live shows, he would do a segment about the town or city they were broadcasting from—so with those two segments, he took us by the hand and explored Canada, one place, one voice at a time.
What I’m circling around is this—I’ve been trying to find a way of saying it without slapping Garrison Keillor around, because I really do try to avoid recommending things by bagging on other things—buuuuut, here goes: Garrison Keillor often seemed delighted by himself, whereas Stuart McLean seemed delighted by humanity.
Stuart McLean died in 2017, and he stopped recording new shows a few years before that, when he got sick. Now, his former producer has started a new podcast—Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe—and is highlighting two Dave & Morley stories a week, along with telling stories about working with Stuart.
I listened to the first two episodes while I was out walking before work this morning, and wow: I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his voice until the recording started and I fully started just… crying. And then, within ten minutes, he had me full-on holding my stomach, in pain from all the laughing. If anyone happened to look out their window while I was walking by, they’ve have thought, OH DEAR, THE LIBRARIAN HAS FINALLY LOST IT. WELL, IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.
Previously
Talk soon,
Leila